The Battle of Arnhem

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Text originally published in 1962 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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The Battle of Arnhem

by

CHRISTOPHER HIBBERT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS AND DIAGRAMS 4

MAPS AND DIAGRAMS 5

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 6

PREFACE 7

PART ONE — The Plan 9

1 —‘The Most Momentous Error of the War’ 9

2 — Operation Market Garden 15

3 — ‘The Toughest and Most Advanced Assignment’ 23

4 — ‘The Saviour of the Eastern Front’ 35

PART TWO — The Operation 38

5 — Sunday 38

6 — Monday 69

7 — Tuesday 85

8 — Wednesday 99

9 — Thursday 109

10 — Friday 132

11 — Saturday and Sunday 137

12 — Monday 151

PART THREE — Post-mortem 157

13 — The Lost Prize 157

BIBLIOGRAPHY 164

UNPUBLISHED SOURCES 164

PUBLISHED SOURCES 165

PERIODICALS 167

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 170

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS AND DIAGRAMS

Brigadier G.W. Lathbury by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

Brigadier J.W. Hackett by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

Brigadier P.H.W. Hicks by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

Major-General R.E. Urquhart outside his headquarters by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

Major-General S. Sosabowski by permission of Associated Press, London

Field-Marshall Walter Model by permission of Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich

General Kurt Student

General Willi Bittrich by permission of Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich

Field-Marshall Model, General Bittrich and Oberst Harmel at a German Staff Conference by permission of Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich

Paratroopers jumping by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

Men and supplies parachute to earth by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

A landing zone by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

The main dropping zone by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

Unloading a glider by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

Advancing into Arnhem by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

A Piat gun covering the Arnhem road by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

The first German prisoners by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

German troops taken prisoner in a Dutch house by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

The Bridge at Arnhem, showing the wreckage of the German armour on the ramp at the northern end by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

A 6-pounder anti-tank gun in action by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

Defending the Park Hotel at Hartenstein by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

A resupply mission by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

Collecting supplies by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

Searching a school for snipers by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

German troops in Arnhem

British prisoners being escorted through Arnhem

A Dutch nurse tending the wounded by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, London

Wounded British prisoners

MAPS AND DIAGRAMS

North-West Europe

OPERATION MARKET GARDEN

Arnhem and its surroundings, showing the proposed landing and dropping zones and dispositions at midnight, September 19th–20th, 1944

The flying routes

The perimeter, September 25th, 1944

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wishes to express his gratitude to the authors and publishers of the following books and articles for permission to quote from them:

A Full Life by Lieutenant-General Sir Brian Horrocks (Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd); Arnhem by Major-General R.E. Urquhart (Cassell and Company Ltd); Arnhem Lift by Louis Hagen (Hammond, Hammond & Company, Limited); Buch der Tapferkeit by Erich Kern (Duffel Verlag, Leoni am Starnberger See); Cloud over Arnhem by Kate A. ter Horst (Allan Wingate Ltd); Crusade in Europe by Dwight D. Eisenhower (Doubleday and Company, Inc., New York); Freely I Served by Stanislaw Sosabowski (William Kimber & Co. Limited); Lease of Life by Andrew Milbourne (Museum Press Ltd); My Three Tears with Eisenhower by Harry C. Butcher (William Heinemann Ltd; Simon and Schuster, Inc., New York); Nine Days by Ronald Gibson (Stockwell Ltd); Normandy to the Baltic by Field-Marshal Montgomery (Hutchinson & Co. Ltd; Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston); Operation Victory by Major-General Sir Francis de Guingand (Hodder & Stoughton Ltd); Return Ticket by Anthony Deane-Drummond (Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd); Straight On by Robert Collis (Methuen & Co. Ltd); The Battle Round the Bridge at Arnhem by M. Heijbroek (The Airborne Museum, Kasteel de Doorwerth); The Eighty-Five Days by R.W. Thompson (Hutchinson & Co. Ltd); The 43rd Wessex Division at War 1944–1945 by Major-General H. Essame (William Clowes & Sons Ltd); The Second World War by Winston S. Churchill (Cassell and Company Ltd); The Silent War by Allard Martens (Hodder & Stoughton Ltd); The Struggle for Europe by Chester Wilmot (Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd); Top Secret by Ralph Ingersoll (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York); War As I Knew It by General George S. Patton (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston); With the Red Devils at Arnhem by Marek Sweicicki (Max Love).

‘Airborne Operation’ by Alexander Johnson (Services and Territorial Magazine); ‘Arnhem Diary’ by Lieutenant J. Stevenson, Postscript by Sergeant F. Winder and Intelligence Officer’s Report (Reconnaissance Journal); ‘Arnhem from the Other Side’ by Colonel-General Kurt Student (An Cosantoir); ‘Arnhem 17–26 September’ by Major H.S. Cousens (Sprig of Shillelagh), ‘Do You Remember?’ by J.A.G. (Pegasus); ‘Do You Remember?’ by D.O.C. (Pegasus); ‘The Airborne Operation in Holland’ by Major C.F.O. Breeze (The Border Magazine); ‘The Battle of Arnhem Bridge’ by Major E.M. Mackay (Blackwood’s Magazine); ‘The Evacuation of the First Airborne Division from Arnhem’ (Royal Engineers Journal); ‘With the RAMC at Arnhem’ by Robert Smith (Stand-To).

PREFACE

‘There has been no single performance by any unit that has more greatly inspired me or more highly excited my admiration’, wrote General Eisenhower to the Commander of the 1st British Airborne Division when the battle of Arnhem was over, ‘than the nine-day action of your Division between September 17 and 26.’

The battle was, indeed, one of the great epic tragedies which ennoble the history of the British Army. It was planned in the light of Intelligence which proved to be false; it was characterised by a succession of miscalculations and disasters; it ended in surrender and retreat. Out of nearly 9,000 men who had landed scarcely more than 2,000 returned; but it was a victory for the human spirit. It has a special quality, a flavour almost of mystique. Men who were there—Germans, Poles and Dutchmen as well as British soldiers—talk of it as though it were fought yesterday. It is, for many reasons, unique.

It is impossible for me to catalogue here the names of the many people in England, Holland and Germany who have spoken to me about the battle, or who have written to me about it, and to whom I am so grateful for the trouble they have taken on my behalf; but there are some who have been good enough to help me in a specially valuable way by providing me with information which I could not have obtained elsewhere or by letting me make use of personal documents and diaries from which I have quoted in my book. I want, therefore, particularly to thank Lieutenant-Colonel Th. A. Boeree, Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Browning, K.C.V.O., K.B.E., C.B., D.S.O., Mr. R.H. Cain, V.C., Mr. Fred Davis, Mr. David Dawson, Brigadier Anthony Deane-Drummond, D.S.O., M.C., Major-General H. Essame, C.B.E., D.S.O., M.C., Herr Otto Felder, Major-General J.D. Frost, D.S.O., M.C., Major-General G. de Gex, O.B.E., Mevrouw Ida Goch, Lieutenant-Colonel C.F.H. Gough, M.C., T.D., M.P., Lieutenant-General J.W. Hackett, C. B., C.B.E., D.S.O., M.C., Mr. John Harris, Oberst Walter Harzer, Mijnheer P. Houten, Major Anthony Hibbert, M.C., Air Commodore W.N. Hibbert, Mijnheer Paul de Jong, General Sir Gerald Lathbury, K.C.B., D.S.O., M.B.E., Brigadier J.E.F. Linton, D.S.O., Colonel R.T.H. Lonsdale, D.S.O., M.C., Brigadier Charles Mackenzie, D.S.O., O.B.E., Major-General RJ. Moberly, C.B., O.B.E., Brigadier E.C.W. Myers, C.B.E., D.S.O., Major John North, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Preston, Mr. Cyril Ray, Major C.G. Sheriff, D.S.O., Mr. Eric Spence, Brigadier W.F.K. Thompson, O.B.E., Major Brian Urquhart, Major-General R.E. Urquhart, C.B., D.S.O., Mijnheer A.A. Van Beelen, Mijnheer J.D. Waarde, Colonel G.M. Warrack, D.S.O., O.B.E., The Rev. R. Talbot Watkins, M.C., and Mr. Clifford Williams.

I want also to thank Lieutenant-Colonel P.St.C. Harrison of the Regimental Headquarters of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers; Major D.M. Mayfield, T.D., of the Regimental Headquarters of the Parachute Regiment; Lieutenant-Colonel O.G.W. White, D.S.O., O.B.E., and the staff of the Dorset Regiment Museum, Dorchester; Lieutenant-Colonel J.K. Windeatt, O.B.E., of the Regimental Headquarters of the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment; and Mejuffrouw Greta Barmes of the Royal Netherlands Embassy.

For their help in my researches I want to thank Mr. D.W. King, O.B.E., the War Office Librarian and his staff; the staff of the Imperial War Museum; Brigadier H.B. Latham of the Historical Section of the War Office; Mr. L.A. Jackets and Mr. W. Mervyn Mills of the Air Historical Branch of the Air Ministry; Mr. L.W. Burnett of the War Office Records Centre; Sergeant D. Wrigley of the Airborne Forces Museum, Aldershot; Mr. Richard Wiener; Miss Frances Ryan; Mrs. St. George Saunders of Writers’ and Speakers’ Research; Lieutenant-Colonel Roderick A. Stamey, Jr, of the office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, Washington; Mr. Sherrod East, Chief Archivist, World War II Records Division of the National Archives and Record Service of the Central Services Administration, Washington; and the Staffs of the Bundesarchiv, Koblenz and the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, Freiburg im Breisgau.

For having read the proofs, in whole or in part, and for having made valuable suggestions for their improvement I am grateful to Brigadier Deane-Drummond, Brigadier Thompson, General Hackett, General Lathbury, Colonel Lonsdale, General Moberly, General Essame, Colonel Warrack, Brigadier Myers, General Urquhart and Oberst Walter Harzer.

C. H.

PART ONE — The Plan

1 —‘The Most Momentous Error of the War’

‘One powerful full-blooded thrust across the Rhine and into the heart of Germany, backed by the whole of the resources of the Allied Armies, would be likely to achieve decisive results.’—Field-Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery

On the evening of August 8th, 1944, ten days before he committed suicide, Günther von Kluge, Hitler’s Commander-in-Chief in the West, telephoned General Hausser of the 7th German Army. ‘A breakthrough such as we have never seen’, he told him urgently, ‘has occurred south of Caen.’

A fortnight later the Allied armies were streaming across France. Soon after dawn on August 25th, French and American armoured columns rattled down the Champs-Élysées and into the Boulevard St. Germain. The people of Paris rushed out to greet them with flowers and wine, shouting and cheering, clapping their hands, reaching up to touch the unshaven, friendly faces. Paris was French again; the Germans were in full retreat; there was a feeling in the air that the war was as good as over.

With their armies rolling east before them, on an irregular front which stretched and looped for hundreds of miles across northern France, the Allied commanders could not feel such confidence. To maintain this rate of advance on so broad a front was impossible. The armies must either slow down or the already strained resources of administration and supply must be concentrated behind a single thrust into Germany. This was the inevitable choice.

Sir Bernard Montgomery left no room for doubt as to what he thought should be done. He had already suggested to General Omar Bradley, commanding the US 12th Army Group, that after crossing the Seine his own 21st Army Group and Bradley’s 12th ‘should keep together as a solid mass of 40 divisions, which would be so strong that it need fear nothing. This force should advance northwards.’

Bradley recognised the merit of Montgomery’s plan; but Eisenhower, as Supreme Commander, could not agree to it. His reasons could be made to appear entirely military, but there were other reasons which he could not so readily give, both political and characteristic. On the day that Montgomery’s advice of a thrust in the north was offered to Eisenhower through Bradley, the principal New York newspapers made public the disturbing fact that Bradley’s Army Group, comprising General Patton’s 3rd US Army and General Hodges’s 1st US Army, was still under Montgomery’s ‘operational control’. While this may have been reluctantly acceptable to American opinion during the Normandy landings and initial operations—which were, as Eisenhower himself said, ‘a single battle requiring the supervision of a single battleline commander’—it was not at all acceptable now.

Unlike Alexander, for whom Eisenhower had already stated a preference before the Normandy landings, Montgomery was not a popular figure with Americans in general, still less so with American Army officers in particular. ‘Montgomery was a general we did not like’, wrote Ralph Ingersoll, the American war correspondent. ‘We found him arrogant to the point of bumptiousness, bad-mannered and ungracious.’ And in August after the news of Bradley’s subordination to Montgomery had created such an uproar in the American Press, General Marshall, Chief of Staff in Washington, wrote urgently to Eisenhower telling him that in view of the ‘severe editorial reaction’ to the news of Montgomery’s continued influence, he should immediately ‘assume and exercise direct command of the ground forces’ himself. Eisenhower, well aware of the feeling amongst his staff at SHAEF, irrespective of what had appeared in the American newspapers, took Marshall’s advice and on August 23rd informed Montgomery that he intended to take over direct control of Allied operations as from September 1st. He said at the same time that he intended to continue the advance on a broad front as it was necessary not only to push forward in the north to secure a good sea port for an eventual thrust towards the Ruhr, but also to press on in the south so that General Patton’s 3rd US Army could link up with the French and American armies coming up from the Mediterranean. It was, in fact, this ‘necessity’ of advancing on extended and even diverging lines of operation that Eisenhower gave to Montgomery as his reasons for assuming overall control.

Eisenhower’s method of attack appeared to Montgomery both unimaginative and dangerous. ‘Administratively we haven’t the resources to maintain both Army Groups at full pressure’, Montgomery insisted with the determination and single-mindedness of an obdurate man who knows when he is right. ‘The only policy is to halt the right and strike with the left, or halt the left and strike with the right. We must decide on one thrust and put all the maintenance to support it. If we split the maintenance and advance on a broad front, we shall be so weak everywhere we’ll have no chance of success.’

He had not, he tried to make clear, a personal axe to grind. He was quite prepared to serve under Bradley if that should be considered advisable as, in his view, operations could only be successfully controlled by a single ground commander. He was, however, satisfied that the administrative resources available for a broad-front policy ‘would not stand up to the strain’, but that, on the other hand, ‘one powerful full-blooded thrust across the Rhine and into the heart of Germany, backed by the whole of the resources of the Allied armies, would be likely to achieve decisive results’. He was obsessed, he was later to confess, by the thought that the impetus of the Allied advance might not be maintained after the crossing of the Seine. Whatever happened, he told Eisenhower, the Germans must not be allowed time to reorganise and oppose in strength a crossing of the next and far greater obstacle, the Rhine. He felt sure that if the enemy were kept on the run, the Allies could cross the Rhine quickly, make north-west for the Ruhr and so draw the Germans into a fight on the north German plains which would give the Allied armour the advantage of a chosen battle-ground. Otherwise ‘the enemy would be given time to recover and we should become involved in a long winter campaign’.

It was a persuasive argument but Eisenhower held firm. There was, he insisted, one decisive factor which Montgomery did not appreciate. Even if it were agreed that his plan was strategically sound and logistically possible, this problem remained: the deep thrust in the north, which the British proposed, would entail his having to hold back George Patton’s 3rd US Army in the south. ‘The American public’, he told Montgomery, ‘would never stand for it.’

He may well have been right. Patton’s short sturdy figure, his tough little face under the star-splashed helmet, his flamboyant poses and well-known independence, the famous pearl-handled revolver in its open, cowboy’s holster and his undoubted success, were all a part of the American ideal of the ‘little old fighting general’, at once tough and emotional. Nor was Patton’s success a fortuitous one; he was a very good general and an expert in the art of military exploitation.

Eisenhower, not only as an American but as a diplomatist, a Supreme Commander and a realist in matters of this kind, felt that Patton must not be stopped. The public, he repeated, ‘would never stand for it; and public opinion wins war.’

‘Victories win wars’, Montgomery snapped with impatient logic, dismissing public opinion in a statement symptomatic both of his greatness and the limits of his vision. ‘Give people victory and they won’t care who won it.’

Patton and public opinion were not, of course, the only considerations. Eisenhower felt confident that what he was later to term Montgomery’s ‘pencil-like thrust into the heart of Germany’ would meet nothing but certain destruction. Apart from this, neither the British nor the Canadians had yet proved themselves capable of the verve and dash that Patton’s men were so splendidly displaying to an admiring world. It would be safer and wiser in the circumstances, he thought, for the whole Allied force to advance to the Rhine, obtain bridgeheads where possible and, when the dangerously long lines of communication had been shortened by the capture of the Channel ports and Antwerp and when the whole matter of supply and reinforcements had been re-established on a firmer base, to attack either in the north towards the Ruhr or along the southern axis through the Saar and Frankfurt or perhaps on both lines simultaneously, dependent upon conditions. Montgomery was accordingly given orders to secure Antwerp and push on towards that part of the Siegfried Line which covered the Ruhr, while Patton was authorised to continue east towards the Saar. The broad-front policy was confirmed.

Eisenhower was, however, prepared to give some priority to Montgomery; for the capture of the Channel ports and Antwerp was an essential prerequisite to the successful development of any attack into Germany. And so the advance into Belgium of Montgomery’s 21st Army Group—comprising the British 2nd Army under General Dempsey and the 2nd Canadian Army under General Crerar—was to be supported by the 1st US Army which was to ‘establish itself in the general area Brussels—Maastricht—Liège—Charleroi’. Later on, ‘up to and including the crossing of the Rhine’, Montgomery was, in addition, to have the support of the Allied Airborne Army which had recently been formed under the command of an American, Lieutenant-General Lewis H. Brereton.

On August 29th Montgomery’s advance was resumed. His commanders were instructed to be ‘swift and relentless...Any tendency to be sticky or cautious must be stamped on ruthlessly.’ If Patton could exploit an advantage, Montgomery was determined to show that he could too.

He was brilliantly served. By noon the following day the commander of his XXX Corps, the brave and gifted Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, had sent the 11th Armoured Division racing for Amiens. At dawn on the 31st, after driving all night in the teeming rain, the leading tanks rumbled into the cobbled town and took over the Somme bridges from the Resistance. The command post of the German 7th Army Headquarters was overrun and General Hans Eberbach was captured as he drove away, still in his pyjamas, in a Volkswagen. Two days later the Guards Armoured Division reached the Belgian border near Lille and two American divisions crossed it further south. On the afternoon of September 3rd the Guards drove into Brussels and by the evening of the next day Antwerp, too, had fallen. The 15th German Army was isolated in Flanders; the 7th had been routed.

Montgomery hoped that Eisenhower would surely recognise, at last, the chance for a final blow that lay within his grasp. The chance had been clear a fortnight before; now it was unmistakable. He sent a signal suggesting that the time was ideal for that ‘one powerful thrust’ he had already advocated. ‘We have now reached a stage’, he insisted, ‘where a really powerful and full-blooded thrust towards Berlin is likely to get there and thus end the war.’

The successes of the past few days, however, seem to have indicated to Eisenhower that a continued advance by all his forces, ‘to keep the enemy stretched everywhere’, would not only be safer but more rewarding. At the end of August he had spoken of the certainty of ‘one major battle before we break into Germany’ and of the necessity of not being ‘too optimistic about an early end of the war’; and after the war was over he wrote of his anxiety lest the enemy’s ‘considerable reserve’ in Germany would bring a single thrust to ruin. But at this period he seems to have believed that the whole defence of Germany’s West Wall was crumbling. ‘The defeat of the German armies’, he wrote on September 5th, ‘is now complete.’ A week later, Captain Harry Butcher, one of his staff officers at SHAEF, noted in his diary: ‘He felt for some days it had been obvious that our military force could advance almost at will, subject only to supply.’ And despite the growing difficulties of supply and administration Eisenhower still, even then, apparently hoped that the British drive to the Ruhr and the American drive to the Saar could be supported simultaneously. ‘We shall soon have captured the Ruhr and the Saar and the Frankfurt area’, Montgomery was surprised to read in a letter from Eisenhower addressed to